Pilot Pokryshkin:
Height – Speed – Manouvre – Strike

A mass of energies, space and a host of positions…
What is the essence of victory? All must rise to the greatest heights!
The speed of thought is lightning, light up the celebrations!
With a smooth manouvre open a great dream for us

A moment never re-appears and a mind wide open
Collects all and the images of the snowy peaks
Filling life with dangerous mountain paths
And gives us crystals, without knowing why

And thus, by filling space to the edge of the possible
I penetrate the sonorous pain of dawn
I reach and hear the careful steps
And bring myself to those who’re yet not cold

As the truth gathers the invisible with mountain fire
It shall create beauty through its self-expression
Transforming all that is external only through the depths,
Expressing its heights in the most primitive

This is how pain and harsh reality are made flesh

A heroic deed may not just be in the ways of war.

But bringing the new into the relativity of the trivial

Is the light of life in its battles and labors.

***

Pokryshkin was the great tactician of the Soviet Air Force during the Second World War. He almost single-handedly fought to change the obsolete Soviet tactics that were in place in 1941 when the war started. Going against the establishment and openly defying the approved combat doctrine almost cost him his career and possibly his life. After openly criticising the official tactics that led to huge losses and teaching his fellow pilots new tactics he invented himself, he was grounded and scheduled to be tried by court martial. However, word of his innovations eventually reached his superiors in Moscow, and instead of a court martial, Pokryshkin was awarded and promoted. By the end of the war his writings had been published and distributed to all Soviet pilots, and he toured fighter regiments extensively lecturing young pilots on his techniques.

***

A Brief Commentary.

First request: Ignore the fact that Pilot Pokryshkin fought for the Soviets.

Or don’t.

What can a New Resistance Cadre or supporter learn from this heart-racing Futurist-style poem and his ultra-heroic story?

That action always beats reaction.

That a warrior (and for us a Revolutionary) uses whatever means available and often unseen inspiration to claim victory in the skies, the battlefield, or in the war of the heart.

Sharing a goal does not mean to blindly follow a method if you should discover a better way. Do what works.

Results over dogma yesterday, today, and always.

Ultimately, Courage and Creativity is Rewarded with Victory. And Victory brings Glory.

Read the poem again with these thoughts in mind.

And whatever his ideology give all respect to a true Kshatrya Alexander Ivanovich Pokryshkin.

A man who fought in 560 combat missions,156 air-to-air engagements, personally shooting down 59 enemy aircraft and six more with other pilots.